1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a learning support method in so-called “e-Learning” system and particularly, to a learning support method to provide various information attendant on learning contents for a learner.
2. Prior Art
In late years the learning support system with a network and the World Wide Web technology has been developed. A learner (a student) is able to attend a lecture opened on the Web through an web browser. Accordingly, a learner can study in a desired time at a desired place without limitations of time and place.
However, unlike a classroom education, in which a plurality of learners gather on a classroom to attend a lecture, each learner has to study individually in the learning support system. Each learner feels a situation and an atmosphere in the classroom during a lecture according to the classroom education. On the other hand, a learner has to continue solitary works because he or she cannot grasp the situation of another learner.
Further, each learner gets the sense of intelligibility of the other learners through interactions between an instructor and other learners in the classroom education. Accordingly each learner can guess the difficulty level of contents of the lecture. That is, high intelligibility of most learners shows that the contents of the lecture are easy to understand. On the contrary, low intelligibility of most learners shows that the contents are difficult to understand. According to the intelligibility of the other learners, when a learner could not understand the lecture, he or she can determine whether he or she should try to continue because the lecture is easy or he or she should stop attending the lecture and attend a lecture of another level because the current lecture is too difficult. Further, an instructor can realize intelligibility and degree of concentrations of the learners through their facial expressions, behavior and an atmosphere of the classroom. Therefore, the instructor can improve the intelligibility by changing a way of explanation and so on.
On the other hand, a service offerer of a conventional learning support system grasps the intelligibility of the learners indirectly through test results and questions from the learners. However, a frequency of test is limited. Further it is difficult to know intelligibility of each learner based on contents of the questions because a question is a voluntary action of a learner. Since the learner who could not understand the contents of the lecture does not usually realize what point he or she could not understand, he or she cannot construct a question by analyzing an unknown portion. For example, a questioner who asks “what is corresponding to the session layer?” after the description “IP of TCP/IP corresponds to a network layer of OSI seven-layer model and TCP corresponds to a transport layer thereof” understands the contents of the description. On the contrary, a learner who does not know the OSI seven-layer model cannot ask questions about the description.
Further, in a classroom education, a learner does not exit from a classroom without saying a word even if he or she could not understand the contents of the lecture because he or she is attending the lecture with other learners in the classroom. However, in e-learning, a learner stops attending a lecture when he or she could not understand the contents of the lecture with or without frustration because he or she is not restrained in a classroom.
Accordingly, a repeat ratio, which is a ratio of repeaters who attend a lecture of the next step or other series after they finish the previous lectures, may be equal to or smaller than 10% in the conventional learning support systems.